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July 2013

July 22, 2013

There are days that I wake up
thinking about the best burger and the best Manhattan cocktail that I have ever
had.

They are served at Goose
& Gander, in St. Helena, and often, as I open my eyes, I think: “This is
going to be a G&G Manhattan & Burger Day.” In short, I am addicted.

To others like me, who are co-dependent
on this incomparable, perfect pairing, Goose & Gander is now the large X on
our local gastronomic map. X marks the spot for Sublime Pleasure.

I asked one of America’s top
sommeliers to join me at G&G earlier this month to experience this
formidable food/cocktail pairing and he pronounced the Manhattan, which
bartender Scott Beattie has perfected, “the best Manhattan I’ve ever had.”

And that’s saying something,
because this sommelier lives and works, in Manhattan, NY, where they know
something about making delicious cocktails. Especially the city’s namesake
drink.

How much do I love the
Manhattan and Burger at G&G? Consider this my 1138-word love poem for the perfect
Manhattan and perfect succulent, juicy, addictive burger served here.

First, We Take Manhattan

(With thanks to Canadian poet
and singer, Leonard Cohen, who wrote and composed “First We Take Manhattan. His lyrics: “First we take Manhattan...
then we take Berlin...”)

Scott Beattie making the Perfect Manhattan

Popular myth suggests that the Manhattan cocktail originated at the
Manhattan Club in New York City in the 1870s where it was invented for a
banquet hosted by Winston Churchill’s mother.

Supposedly, the success of the banquet made
the drink fashionable, prompting people to request the drink by referring to
the name of the club where it originated—"the Manhattan
cocktail."

However, if truth be known, Winston’s mother,
Lady Randolph Churchill, was in France at the time, so the story is fictive.

Since inception, wherever and when ever that
was, the Manhattan has always been a mix of American whiskey, Italian vermouth
and Angostura bitters.

Scott Beattie, bartender extraordinaire, at Goose
& Gander

“When my co-bartender Michael Pazdan and I
were asked to set up the bar at Goose & Gander, we assembled 300 different
whiskies and spirits to select the best flavor combinations,” recalls Scott
Beattie.

“To make the best tasting
Manhattan, we opted for a combination of equal parts bourbon and rye. It makes
a more compelling drink.”

Beam me aboard, Scottie!

Scott’s personal choices were
for Evan Williams Single Barrel Bourbon and Templeton Rye, which together
produce warm, harmonious, tones; cut them with Carpano Antica, an Italian
vermouth, add splashes of three different bitters, and you have the makings of
a Perfect Manhattan.

The Holy Trinity of Spirits used by Scott Beattie to
make his Best-Ever Manhattan

Then Scott adds unique touches
to amplify pleasure:

Instead of pouring the
stirred (never shaken), ingredients over small ice cubes, Scott opts to pour
them over ONE large cube that’s about the size of a major league baseball. Or Muhammad
Ali’s fist.

Cutting a single ice cube out of a 25-pound block of
ice

“We import our ice from San
Francisco where we have a specialty firm make 25-pound blocks for us of
oxygen-removed, totally clear ice,” says Scott. We saw it down to manageable
size with a chain saw and then use a serrated knife to chip it into individual
cubes.”

“This is how they chilled
cocktails when they were first invented,” Scott points out, “so our practice
pays homage to the drink’s origin.”

Besides, Scott says that one
large cube does a better job of chilling the drink and doesn’t dilute the
whiskies, as smaller cubes might do.

Another secret to the G&G
Manhattan is that it is made with not one, but splashes of THREE different bitters.
These are Angostura Aromatic Bitters, Jerry Thomas’ The Bitter Truth Bitters,
and Fee Brothers Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters.

Bartenders, to whom napaman
has spoken about Manhattan cocktails, generally choose two commercially
available liqueur-infused cherries for garnish.

Some barmen like Amarena Fabbri
wild cherries from Italy; others, like Scott, prefer Kirsch-soaked Morello cherries,
produced in France under the Griottines label. Both products are available on
amazon.com.

And finally, for home
mixologists, there is this sensational tip:

COMBINE ALL THE INGREDIENTS IN A SEALABLE JAR DAYS, EVEN
WEEKS, AHEAD OF SERVING. STORE AT ROOM TEMPERATURE, OR IN THE FRIDGE, AND POUR THE
MIXTURE OVER A LARGE SINGLE ICE CUBE IN A WIDE, OLD-FASHIONED, WHISKEY GLASS
WHEN DESIRED.

“All the ingredients in a Manhattan
are high in alcohol,” says Scott. “We mix them together in their proper ratios
and store the mixture in a container for later use – we never have time to make
individual Manhattans from scratch at the bar.”

So the barman makes up
quarts, or gallons, of his cocktail mix ahead of time, and pours out drinks as
they are ordered.

Pour over one large ice cube
in a wide-mouthed, old-fashioned whiskey glass. Garnish with several Amarena
wild cherries, or Griottines Kirsch-macerated, Morello cherries.

AND NOW, FOR
SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

THE BEST BURGER TO
ACCOMPANY THE BEST MANHATTAN

Why stop at perfection from
the bar?

The kitchen at G&G is
equally successful in the domain of Perfection. Namely, their burgers.

Here’s what makes this burger
so dramatically better than any other burger I have tasted in Napa Valley:

They ask their meat purveyor
to blend ground chuck that has been procured from three different ranches.

The G&G burger has a
sheen, a juicy ooziness, that first affects the eye – and afterward the palate --
the same way a sensual Renoir, or Cezanne, painting causes wonderment, sometimes leading to Stendhal’s Syndrome, a condition experienced when art (or
hamburgers!) cause you to faint from the overwhelming pleasure of the
experience.

Oh, and the burger’s taste?
Magnificent. Primal. Ethereal. Addictive.

Each 9.5-ounce burger is
grilled over a combination of hardwoods and served on a ciabatta bun created exclusively
for G&G by Model Bakery, in St. Helena.

The burger is topped with Romaine
leaves, cheese, bacon, bone marrow (optional) and the bun is lathered with a
tasty, textured, remoulade sauce.

The burger is accompanied by
a generous serving of French fries twice-fried in duck fat.

If you can find a better
burger in Napa Valley – or a better Manhattan – napaman wants to hear about it.

Until we have the names of other
Bar n’ Burger candidates to share with readers of this column, head to Goose
& Gander for your own OMG! Manhattan & Burger moment.

For writers, 2010 might be
called “The Vintage From Hell to Describe,” because how good Napa Valley 2010
Cabs turned out depends on whom you ask.

Charles Thomas, winemaker at Quintessa, pours for Rick
Kushman of Capital Public Radio.

Charles Thomas, winemaker at
Quintessa, called 2010 “one of the three best vintages of the decade for Quintessa.”

He added, “Yes, there was
fear of rain, and fear of heat, but we picked and sorted properly and the
result speaks for itself.”

The Magician’s Vintage?

Other winemakers called 2010 “The
Magician’s Vintage,” suggesting that good winemakers had to pull a rabbit – or
a great claret – out of a hat at the last minute, faced as all winemakers were with
a tumultuous growing season that featured heat spikes to 110 F degrees in August
and five inches of rain in late October, 2010.

Staglin winemaker Fredrik Johansson and owner Shari
Staglin

“2010 was one of the toughest
growing seasons,” said Fredrik Johansson, winemaker at Staglin. “We had to
contend with damp days, foggy days, heat, rain, all of it made even more
challenging as we’re all-organic.”

Grape grower and vineyard specialist Dave Piña leads press discussion

Grape growers like Dave Piña,
who spend time in the vineyards, have a different, nuanced appreciation of the
vintage. “Trust me, it didn’t matter whether you picked before the October
rains or not – it’s how you grew and tended your grapes all season long that
mattered,” he explained.

Dave might well be right. In
a blind tasting of 18 Rutherford Cabs from 2010, I rated his Piña Firehouse
Vineyard 93 points – my second favorite wine in the tasting. It is a
sensational wine -- and for the record, Dave picked AFTER the October rains.
His grapes all got washed by the October downpour.

BTW: Lest readers think
Rutherford is some HUGE appellation, here’s the reality: Rutherford has a
reputation that far exceeds its geographic footprint.

Rutherford, only six square
miles in size, is planted with 3,518 acres of vines, producing less than
one-quarter-of-one-percent (that’s .25 percent!) of all the wine produced in
America. By comparison, Disney World in Orlando, FLA, at 47 acres, is nearly
eight times bigger!

In the morning blind tasting:

The Board of the Rutherford
Dust Society selected 18 Cabernets from the 2010 vintage and poured them blind
for assembled journalists.

Napaman tasted through them,
scored and ranked the wines. At this annual event, in many previous years, the
least expensive wines in this tasting score higher than the most expensive
wines. Such was not the case today.

In fact, the most expensive
wine in the blind tasting, the 2010 Staglin INEO Cabernet was my favorite
blind-tasted wine, scoring 94 points. The wine is $250 a bottle, which is
considerably more than any other wine in the tasting.

I asked Staglin winemaker
Fredrik Johansson to explain the origin of the name.

“INEO is Latin for “beginning,” and we first applied it to
our Rutherford Cab the year we departed from our conventional vineyard blend.
For the first time – our new beginning --
we added Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot to the blend.”

Blind Tasting Summary

Here were my top 5 wines,
tasted blind, from 18 presented.

All are 2010 Cabs, all the
fruit comes from Rutherford.

Staglin INEO, $250 a bottle, to be released Oct. 1,
2013. 94 points.

This wine had a gorgeous
nose, sporting rich, elegance right out of the glass. Of all the wines tasted,
it had the most velours-like texture, which set it apart from all the other
wines tasted. Words like “gorgeous, elegant, restrained,“ appear in the margins
of my tasting sheet for this wine.

Piña Napa Valley Firehouse Vineyard, $85 a bottle, to
be released this summer. 93 points.

It’s hard not to love this
wine, which scored a single point difference from the Staglin above, yet it
costs two-thirds less.

Dave Piña has previously been
named Napa Valley Winegrower of the Year, he is head of the Rutherford
volunteer fire department, and he’s a helluva great guy, to which I can attest
from social gatherings and evenings we’ve spent together.

His 2010 wine had warm notes,
a generous lode of coffee, even on the nose, and nearly the same type of
textural elements found in the Staglin Cab.

Frank Family Vineyards, Winston Hill Red Wine, $150 a
bottle, to be released in September, 2013. 92 points.

I thought this wine was a bit
hot on the nose, suggestive of a high alcohol level. But I did like the almost
grapefruit rind aroma that evolved in my glass over thirty minutes. Really
liked the complexity of this wine through about 80 percent of the swallow, and
then, at the very end, the alcohol snapped me out of my reverie. Over time,
this wine will likely calm down, and the components integrate, resulting in a
very pretty wine, indeed.

Well integrated fruit on the
nose and a delicious middle palate. Sensuous texture and a pleasing finish.

From a new winery in
Rutherford – former home of Sawyer Winery.

Welcome, new neighbor! (Though for accuracy, Brad Warner was
winemaker at Sawyer for years and continues to make the wine at Foley Johnson.
But you’ve really torn the stitches off the ball this year, Brad, sending it
up... up.. easily a three-base hit ... just missing the center field wall for a
home run.)

In the afternoon, members of
the wine trade were invited to taste 2010 Cabs and one other wine of the
winemaker’s choice, from among 35 Rutherford wineries pouring at the event.

Noticeably absent – one of
the 800-pound gorillas in the appellation, Inglenook, formerly called Rubicon,
and before that Niebaum-Coppola. You know the place, you know the owner,
Francis Ford Coppola.

Why the no-show? Insiders
refer to the fact that there are a lot of changes being made internally as the
winery converts all its brands, labels, and merchandise to Inglenook.

“This will take some time to
complete,” one insider told napaman.com. I suspect we’ll see Inglenook in full
play next year.

I sampled Inglenook’s recent
releases at the winery last weekend and they are seriously good wines that
likely would have shown well today at the Rutherford Dust Society Tasting.

FYI: The Rutherford Dust
Society was founded in 1994 by growers and vintners to carry on the legacy of grape
growing and winemaking, which started here eons ago.

The revered, late winemaker
André Tchelistcheff said it best:

"It takes Rutherford
dust to grow great Cabernet."

What is fondly referred to as
"Rutherford dust," has come to reflect a “commitment to quality, a
spirit of achievement and a deep connection to Rutherford's soil,” says the
Board of the Rutherford Dust Society.

Napaman.com readers wishing
to experience their own Rutherford Tasting must be patient... please circle Dec.
6, 7 and 8 on your calendar this year, the weekend of this year’s annual, Rutherford
Passport Weekend.

Participants will visit Rutherford
wineries and be treated to exclusive barrel tastings, food pairings and
entertainment. You can even speak with winemakers and share your observations
about their wine. (Careful – some of them are permitted to pack more than a
corkscrew...).